Faculty News

Noblit selected to receive Mary Anne Raywid Award

January 27, 2016

By Michael Hobbs

George Noblit

George Noblit, the Joseph R. Neikirk Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education at the School of Education, has been selected by the Society of Professors of Education to receive the 2016 Mary Anne Raywid Award.

The award recognizes people who have made extensive and outstanding contributions to the study of education. It will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Washington, D.C., in April.

The award is named after Mary Anne Raywid who spent 30 years as a professor at Hofstra University. She led SPE in the late 1970s, and died in 2010.

Noblit has taught at the School of Education since 1979, mentoring scores of doctoral students. He won the Impact Award from the Black Alumni of the School of Education in 2011, recognizing his dedication to recruiting, retaining, sponsoring and mentoring students of color. Among his other awards, he has won a Faculty Award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring from Carolina’s Graduate School.

Noblit began his career as a sociologist in the turbulent 1970s. While working on his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Oregon, he conducted research on crime, delinquency and deviance that led to a focus on the impact of schooling on the futures of youth. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1973.

Noblit has studied school desegregation, with a program of research on the social construction of race, using ethnographic research to study schools and other educational scenes.

Award honors education researcher, activist

The Mary Anne Raywid Award recognizes the work of Raywid, who was an education scholar, author, activist and proponent of the small school movement and smaller class sizes. Her 1963 book, “The Ax Grinder,” addressed criticisms of public education and advocated for reform of the system rather than the creation of large numbers of charter and private schools.

The Society of Professors of Education started the Mary Anne Raywid Award in 1996.